


I Face The Horizon, Everywhere I Go

by inlovewithnight



Category: Kenzie-Gennaro Series - Dennis Lehane
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, New Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:13:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-"Sacred." Patrick and Angie take on a smaller case together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Face The Horizon, Everywhere I Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likeadeuce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/gifts).



Angie took the case. Patrick didn’t get it at first, when he read over her notes; it was a minor thing, and barely going to pay for itself as a best-case scenario.

“Angie,” he said, looking up from the papers to frown at her, “what the hell?”

The look on her face said he’d missed the obvious even before she started talking. “Wait,” he said quickly, “wait, let me figure it out.”

“No, I’ll help you, dumbass,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s an easy case.”

“That’s because it’s a nothing case. I mean. Her ex-boyfriend took her car. So what?”

“So she’s got three kids and she needs that car.”

“Right, but it’s not exactly a crisis situation, is it?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when do we only do crises?”

“Uh.” He’d walked right onto dangerous ground without even realizing it. Nice job, Kenzie. “Since a while now, I guess, it seems like.”

“Don’t you need a break?” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked him right in the eye, the way they still didn’t, sometimes, even after getting together. Honesty and vulnerability, the raw stuff, they still weren’t so good at that. 

“I need a break,” she went on. “I desperately, desperately need a break. Like a vacation-type break. But we have to pay the bills, too, so instead, how about something like this?”

“This might not pay the bills either. The thing about nothing cases is they pay nothing, Ang.”

She slammed her hand down on the desk. “Patrick, I just want a case that fucking lets me sleep at night. Is that so wrong?”

He looked at her, then down at the folder. “No. It’s not wrong.”

“Fuck you.”

“Angie. Hey. C’mon.” He put the folder down and stepped toward her, careful to leave her an exit if she needed it, but holding out his arms if she would come to them. “C’mere.”

She glared at him, but let him wrap her up and pull her in. “I just want--”

“I know, babe. I know. I’m an idiot.”

“It’s a really fucking good thing you’re cute.”

He rubbed her back and pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck. “I know.”

“Asshole.” She punched him in the shoulder and started to pull back, then grabbed his face and kissed him instead. “You’re lucky I love you.”

“I am.” He kissed her again, backing her step by step toward the wall. “I’m so fucking lucky I can’t stand it.”

**

The client’s name was Eileen Fitzpatrick. Her ex-boyfriend, one Dougie Montgomery, had returned to her house two weeks after being told to get out and never come back. Eileen had been out on an errand with a friend and the youngest of her kids, but the older two were home and apparently let Dougie inside due to solid personal experience that if they didn’t do what he told them, they got slapped around.

Dougie had helped himself to a six-pack of beer from the fridge, the $10 Eileen left by the phone for the kids to run to the corner for a snack if she was out late, and the car keys, since Eileen and the youngest had gone in the friend’s car. He then exited the area in Eileen’s Oldsmobile and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

The report Angie had run on Dougie showed priors for drunk and disorderly, but nothing violent.

“She said he slapped the kids around, I assume he slapped her around,” Angie said, her feet up on the desk while he read through the file. “But she’s never reported any of it.”

“So we can take a guess that it was never anything violent enough to get a neighbor concerned, or to scare her about the kids.”

“Yeah. Just garden-variety domestic violence. No big deal.”

Patrick glanced over at her and winced in sympathy at the edge in her tone. “You know what I mean, Angie.”

“Yeah.” She took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled smoke toward the window. “I doubt he’ll pull a gun on us or anything like that. He slaps around people who are weaker than him. He doesn’t break skulls for fun.”

“We know a lot of people who do.”

“Should probably tell us something about our lives.”

“If we start down that road, we’re going to end up at the bar instead of looking for Dougie, here.”

“What a choice.” She stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and sat up. “Check the last page of my notes.”

He flipped back and nodded. “One brother, lives in Bar Harbor, they’re close.”

“Easy lead.”

He looked at her over the top of the folder and affected his most dramatic voice. “Almost too easy.”

“Dork.” She threw her cigarette butt at him. “The whole point of this is it’s an easy one.”

He closed the folder and tapped it on the desk. “You feel like taking a road trip to scenic Maine tomorrow?”

“Oh darlin’, whatever will I wear?”

“Never try to do a Southern accent.”

“I can’t get better if I don’t practice.”

“Never, Angie. Just… never.”

**

They left the next morning at 8:30, in Angie’s car. It would take about five hours to get to Bar Harbor, a little more when they factored in stops for food and gas and asking questions, a little less when they factored in Angie’s driving.

Patrick realized a few miles out that they’d never done anything like this, not as a couple. A road trip. Getting the hell out of town. They’d gone to dinner, they’d gone out to the bar, they’d fucked until they wore themselves out, but they hadn’t just taken a trip as the two of them.

They hadn’t fucked until they wore themselves out _in a hotel_ , which he pointed out to her.

She glanced at him over the rims of her sunglasses. “That’s what you’re focused on right now?”

“What else should I be focused on?”

“The case, maybe?”

“There’s nothing to focus on. We have the brother’s address. We have all the time in the world to get there. We have a full tank of gas, a radio, and your legs.”

“Are you telling me you left your legs at home?”

He sighed and slouched in his seat. “You’re being no fun at all, Angie.”

“I’ll let you have control of the radio til Portland.”

“I take it back, you’re a saint.”

**

The drive was work, but also not work, because the actual concrete job stuff wouldn’t begin until they got to Bar Harbor. They were in limbo, untrackable and free as long as they were moving. 

They held hands over the gearshift. They sang along to the radio. Quite frankly, they were disgusting.

Patrick loved every minute of it, and from the smile on Angie’s face, so did she. The smile was even there when she knew that he was looking. That meant something.

As they got closer to Bar Harbor, he wanted to tell her to forget it, to screw the case. They could stop for another meal. They could stop for more gas. They could jump on the next road headed west and never go back to Boston. They could gun for the border and disappear into Canada.

But he didn’t say it, and if she was having the same thought, she didn’t volunteer it, and at about three in the afternoon they pulled up on the street Eileen had told them.

They got out of the car and headed down the sidewalk on foot, holding hands loosely. Angie’s fingers felt good curled against his. They felt right. If he hadn’t been hyper-aware that they were both armed, he could’ve let himself believe the image of a happy young couple checking out neighborhoods suited for dogs and babies that they were trying to emit.

But he did know, and so instead of looking for fenced yards, he was looking for a beat-up Olds with Mass plates outside house number 1604.

“There it is,” Angie said softly. “It’s literally just parked at the curb.”

“That makes our job easy, huh?” He let his free hand slide over the shape of his gun under his jacket. “Knock on the door, ask for Dougie, explain to him that we’re repossessing the car, get out of here.”

“Easy as taking candy from a probably-drunk baby.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the house, trying to size up the likelihood that the owner would be more of a skull-crusher than his brother. The car in the driveway had a bumper sticker asking people to please spay and neuter their pets, courtesy of the SPCA of Hancock County. Hopefully a good sign.

“Or,” Angie said, squeezing his hand.

He glanced at her. “Or?”

“Well. There’s a game tonight.”

“Yes. But even if we get the car right now we’re not gonna get home in time to watch it.”

She squeezed his hand harder, more like a pinch. “I’m saying, I bet Dougie and his brother are going to be pretty well glued to the TV.”

“Okay?”

“Oh my god, Patrick.” She let go of his hand and turned to face him. “They’re not going anywhere. They don’t have any reason to. So we could come back in the morning.”

He was catching on, just a step too slowly. “And tonight we could…”

“Get a hotel.” She nodded and turned the collar up on her jacket. “We should do that, don’t you think? I’m cold.”

He felt a grin crossing his face of its own accord. “That’s not the reason you want a hotel.”

“If you don’t get moving right now, it’s going to be.”

“Yes ma’am.” He looked at the house again, committing to memory the placement of the windows, the quiet attitude of the street, the flicker of a big-screen TV somewhere inside. “Lead the way.”

**

Hotel-room sex had lost a bit of the inherent magic it had had when he was younger, but hotel-room sex _with Angie_ kept special status by virtue of her being herself.

Patrick lay next to her after she fell asleep, his head on her shoulder and his arm around her waist, listening to the rough rhythm of her breathing. Angie never slept easy. She had too much in her dreams.

Floating hazily in the half-awake space of his mind, he thought about Dougie Montgomery. Was taking the car a cheap shot at a woman who’d hurt him, a plain and practical move to transport himself where he wanted to go, or a sad attempt to hold on to a love that had fallen apart? Was taking the car a way to hold on to Eileen after she said she never wanted to see him again? 

A car wasn’t at all the same as a heart, but Patrick had seen more than enough loves gone wrong in his day to know that a hell of a lot of people would take the substitution if they could get away with it.

Dougie wasn’t going to get away with it, though. Patrick and Angie were going to show up on the doorstep of his refuge in the morning and tell him it wasn’t good enough, and it wasn’t gonna work, and then they were going to take the car away, whatever his reason had been in the first place.

Another man, a lesser man, might lie there next to his lady and wonder if the case was trying to tell him something, that it was an omen that love was always going to go sour and die. Patrick wasn’t that man.

_Not us_ , he thought, resting his forehead against Angie’s hair and kissing the back of her neck. _Never us_.

**

“Dougie Montgomery?” Patrick said when the door swung open.

The man inside squinted at him warily. “That’s my brother. I’m Jake.”

“Nice to meet you, Jake.” Patrick offered his hand in sudden, impulsive good faith. It was rewarded by a firm handshake with no threat behind it.

“Eileen sent us to get her car,” Angie said, smiling politely. “Could you go get the keys from Dougie?”

“Aw, hell,” Jake sighed. “I told him he shouldn’t have taken the damn car.”

“She needs that, Mr. Montgomery,” Patrick said, not without sympathy.

“I know it, I know it. I think he hoped she’d come up here after it herself and he’d get a chance to talk to her. Dougie’s never been the smart one, you know.”

“If you could just get the keys,” Angie said again. “We’ll just take it and be on our way. Ms. Fitzpatrick doesn’t want to press charges.”

“Good luck for Dougie, I guess. Wait here just a minute.” 

Jake vanished inside and Patrick glanced at Angie. “You think it’ll really be this easy?”

“We’re due for easy, I think.” She kept her eyes trained down the hallway past the door. “By which I mean I’m crossing my fingers.

“You are not, you’re holding your gun, like a professional.”

“I’m crossing my toes.”

Apparently the universe agreed with Angie, because Jake came back a moment later with the keys in his hand. “He’s embarrassed as hell,” he said apologetically. “He asked if you can tell Eileen he didn’t mean anything bad by it and he would’ve brought it back soon.”

“We’ll let her know,” Patrick assured him. “Thanks.”

“You two need anything else? Some coffee?”

“No,” Angie said. “Thank you, but we’re just going to get on the road.”

“All right. Drive safe.”

The door closed solidly behind them as they walked down the driveway to the Olds. “Should’ve asked him to replace Eileen’s six-pack,” Patrick said, twirling the keys around his finger. “Then we could’ve confiscated it as our per diem.”

“You’re a shark, Kenzie.” Angie kissed him on the cheek and headed down the sidewalk to her car. “Try to keep up with me on the way home.”


End file.
